Cuts put Gulf of Maine buoy network in jeopardy

Sunday

Mar 1, 2009 at 4:17 PMMar 1, 2009 at 4:17 PM

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The operator of a network of ocean buoys that provides detailed information about conditions in the Gulf of Maine says nearly half the buoys could be removed from the water by summer because of funding problems.

The Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System, known as GoMoos, is an arrangement of 11 buoys that collect information on things such as wind, currents, temperature, salinity, oxygen levels and water clarity from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia.

The information, which is posted on the Internet, is popular with scientists as well as with boaters and commercial fishermen who want timely information about ocean conditions.

Now, faced with a third year of federal budget cuts, three of the 11 buoys have been brought ashore or have stopped sending data and won't be fixed.

Two more buoys are considered to be in jeopardy, said GoMoos Chief Executive Officer Philip Bogden. One of those, off Portland Harbor, is scheduled to be hauled out this month.

"We stopped servicing the buoys, and we now only have funds to recover the buoys when they stop sending data," Bogden said.

GoMOOS plans to keep in place a smaller network of six buoys, mostly located offshore, that will still provide data for scientists. But there will be gaps in the measurements and an interruption in data that have been tracked for more than seven years, said Neal Pettigrew, a University of Maine oceanographer and chief scientist for GoMOOS.

"It's terribly frustrating," he said. "The good news is we've learned more about the Gulf of Maine in this period, since 2001, than we've probably learned in the past 50 years. As soon as we put a buoy out there in the Northeast, we started to see things that had never been seen before."

When the GoMoos buoy network was set up eight years ago, it served as a model for other regional ocean observing systems that have since been set up around the country.

Overall, those systems get about half of their funding from the federal government, said Josie Quintrell, executive director of a Harpswell-based group that represents regional ocean observing networks. Similar funding shortfalls are forcing other networks to also pull buoys out of the ocean, she said.

"We are looking hard to diversify funds. It's a really tough economy, and it costs a lot to maintain and operate these systems," Quintrell said. "On the other hand, the paybacks are huge."